What Milton's license plate cameras actually record

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Top of Mind

the one thing to know this morning

Milton has paid Flock Safety $341,235.62 for license plate cameras. That is 22 payments, from October 2020, where our copy of the city checkbook begins, through this past May.

The contracts are coming up for renewal. Which makes this a good week to ask a question almost nobody asks about these cameras: what do they actually record, and what happens to it afterward?

They record considerably more than a license plate.

Flock's own product materials describe something the company calls a Vehicle Fingerprint. Along with your plate number and state, the system logs your vehicle's color, make, model and body style, and distinguishing features such as roof racks, bumper stickers, dents and aftermarket wheels. It logs the direction you were traveling, the time, and the location. Investigators can search on any of that, not only the plate.

They do not record faces. Flock says its cameras identify vehicles rather than people and that it does not use facial recognition. That is worth stating plainly, because it cuts in both directions. It limits what the system can learn about you. It also means a camera hit places a car somewhere at a given moment. It does not establish who was driving it.

How long is it kept? Flock's published default has been 30 days, and the company has said it is moving to a shorter window. But retention is a setting the customer agency chooses. We do not know what Milton's is set to. We have asked.

Who else can look at it? This is the question that has driven cancellations in other cities. Flock says sharing is controlled by the agency, not the company. It removed federal agencies from its statewide and national lookup networks in August 2025, and this January it added a switch letting an agency turn federal sharing off entirely. Agencies can still share directly with one another where the local agency permits it.

Every one of those is a local setting. Which agencies can search Milton's cameras. Whether federal sharing is on or off. How long a record of your car lives on a server. We have put those questions to the police department and asked for answers by Friday. We will print what comes back.

Some of this came up at Tuesday's Council meeting.

A resident, Lindsay DeFranco, used public comment to present records she had obtained about the city's Flock contracts and payments. DeFranco is a candidate for state representative. She told Council the system had grown from 10 cameras to at least 27, and that Flock-related payments had passed $227,000 by the end of 2025. Our own review of the city's published checkbook produces essentially the same figure for that period. The total has since risen to the $341,235.62 above.

Later in the meeting, Councilmember Carol Cookerly disputed the accuracy of that presentation from the dais, calling it “incredibly sophomoric” and referring to “the lies at the podium.” She defended the cameras as a major tool for solving crimes. She pointed to a California arson case. That case is real. A man was convicted last year of setting San Bernardino County's Line fire, which burned roughly 44,000 acres and injured six firefighters, and he was identified through a license plate reader.

In her remarks, Cookerly also referred to people running for office going down this path. We have asked her which statements she believes were inaccurate, and we will print her answer.

Which leaves one question we could not answer ourselves.

Milton invites residents to speak at public comment, and comment closes before the rest of the meeting goes forward. A resident whose remarks are discussed later in that same meeting has no further turn at the microphone. We have asked the city what its rules provide in that situation, and whether a resident has any channel to respond on the record. We do not have the answer yet.

You can listen to both yourself. The city posts video of every Council meeting. Ms. DeFranco's comment begins at 31:14. Councilmember Cookerly's response begins at 2:09:05 and runs about four minutes. We would rather you hear them than take our summary for it.

Sources: the City of Milton's published checkbook, Flock Safety's product and policy documentation, and the city's own video of the September 9 Council meeting.

Council Watch

what the city decided, and what it is about to

Milton’s development authority got a board Tuesday night, and it was seated in about eleven minutes.

Council activated the authority on August 17 but appointed nobody to it. Tuesday it named seven: Steven Golden, Todd Harkleroad, Penn Hodge, Jan Jacobus, Roger Lusby, Brian McNeese and Taylor Smith. All seven are city taxpayers and residents. Their terms run through January 31, 2028.

Councilmember Cookerly moved to approve the slate. Councilmember Dolan seconded. The motion passed unanimously, there was no public comment on the item, and the new directors were sworn in on the spot.

Jan Jacobus is one of the seven, and he also sits on the Council that appointed them. State law permits no more than one member of a city’s governing authority to serve. Milton used that one slot. No recusal was announced and the vote was recorded as unanimous.

Two seats are still open. The law allows up to nine directors, and the mayor noted the city can add two more.

One thing worth watching is what this body is actually for. The staff report says plainly that the authority “remains a citywide public body under state law, while the City’s stated policy direction is to focus on work in the Deerfield Area.” The written resolution calls it the Development Authority of Milton. The oath the directors took Tuesday called it the Deerfield Development Authority.

So the Deerfield focus is a stated policy direction rather than a legal boundary. The board’s next steps are to elect officers, adopt bylaws and set a work plan.

The resolution is also explicit about what it did not do. It “does not approve a particular development, land transaction, bond issue, financing structure, intergovernmental agreement, contract, or expenditure.”

Source: agenda item 26-272, the city’s agenda report and resolution, and the city’s video of the September 9 meeting.

The Roundtable

A Flock contractor called 911 on a journalist in Milton, and three police cars came.

On August 19, Brendan Keefe, chief investigator for Atlanta News First, stopped on a public street to film a contractor upgrading one of the cameras. He was in a marked press van, wearing a high visibility vest. The contractor packed up and left. Keefe followed at a distance.

The contractor called 911 and said he was being followed and, in his words, “getting harassed, pretty much. Taking videos and pictures.”

Three Milton units responded. Keefe said he was a reporter documenting Flock installations. He was released about 17 minutes later with no citation. The officer told him the installer was worried about being identified, and about privacy.

Atlanta News First published it Tuesday, with body camera footage it obtained from the department. It is among the questions we have put to Milton police.

Source: Atlanta News First and InvestigateTV, September 8.

And the camera-glasses case moved past its hearing before the hearing arrived.

In August we reported the arrest of Christopher Hall on a felony charge of unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance. Police said a pair of camera sunglasses was left on a car in a Milton driveway on the night of June 27, aimed at a 13-year-old’s bedroom window. We told you Wednesday’s preliminary hearing would be in this issue.

It did not happen. Court records show the hearing was canceled, and that a grand jury indicted Hall on September 1, eight days earlier, on a single felony count of unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance. The charge carries an offense date of June 27, the night police say the glasses were left. A preliminary hearing tests whether there is probable cause to keep a case going before an indictment. Once a grand jury acts, it is no longer needed.

The case has moved to superior court as 26SC005355, where it is open and listed as a felony. Hall’s next court date is a jail plea and arraignment on October 8. He has been in custody since August 15, when a judge denied bond. Court records also show his attorney changed on September 3.

Hall has not entered a plea. That is what the October 8 arraignment is for. When WSB-TV went to his door in August, he did not come out to speak.

An indictment is not a conviction. It is a grand jury’s finding that there is enough evidence for a case to go forward.

The Budget, and Your Last Word On It

Milton held the first of two public hearings on the fiscal year 2027 budget Tuesday.

The presentation is in the meeting video. The second hearing and the adoption vote are both on Monday, September 21. That is the last meeting before the fiscal year turns over on October 1, and the last scheduled chance to say anything about it before it is law.

Restaurant Week Starts Monday

An overhead view of a family-style dinner table

Milton Restaurant Week runs September 14 to 20. One week, one excuse to eat somewhere you have been meaning to try.

We built a guide to it, and it does one thing the city's list does not: it prices every prix-fixe menu against the restaurant's own regular menu, so you can see which are real discounts and which are simply about the dish.

Our Restaurant Week guide is here, and we keep it current as menus land.

The Scoreboard

every game, both schools, the night it finishes

Friday. Milton is on the road at Battle Ground Academy in Franklin, Tennessee, at 7. Cambridge is home against Denmark at 7:30.

The two met a week ago at Milton and it was not close: Milton 53, Cambridge 21.

Saturday. Milton volleyball plays a tournament all day, opening against Brookwood at 8 a.m., then Northgate at 10, then Science Hill of Johnson City, Tennessee, at 1.